Fri Mar 19 2004 18:41:
What a day. I drove to Los Angeles to take a disk of names to put into the temple, and also to buy myself a new white temple dress since my old one is about six sizes too big. The saleslady told me not to "reject" any just because of how they look on the hanger--you have to see them on. I sorted through and chose two with front buttons, which I figured would be needed to accomodate my IV tubes. Then she talked me into trying a r-e-e-l-l-y-u-g-l-y dress with a zipper down the front, too.

I ended up buying the ugly one because it was about 400% easier to get into, with the tubes and so forth. It doesn't look as ugly on me, it's easy to get in and out of, it was short enough that it wouldn't need hemming, and it was half the price of the others (the final selling point!)

Then I went to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the LA temple Visitors Center. I don't know why I was naive enough to think I was really going to see Dead Sea Scrolls--of course any museum isn't going to send something so valuable and fragile trotting around the country for exhibit. The "scrolls" were copies printed onto Naugahyde. (I guess that sounds worse than it really was, but actually it is kind of sorry.) Many of the other items in the exhibit were things recycled from the Masada exhibit the BYU Museum put on a few years back--all of them reproductions except a Roman sword that wasn't labled as a copy but I'd be very surprised if it were a real one because it's in too good a shape. I didn't learn one thing I didn't already know. I am grateful that I got to see a real Dead Sea Scroll in the British Museum, so that I don't have to pass my life never having seen one.

Then into the temple to get cards made for my names, and their computer wouldn't take the data from my disk. So, huffing and puffing, back to the LA Family History Center where it took a very long time to get everything straightned out. Grrrr. Then back to the temple to make cards, and finally it took. By then I was too exhausted to do any of the work.

I picked up Rachel and took her to lunch at our family's traditional spot, Earth, Wind & Flour in Santa Monica.

Karen Olson was there at the temple doing a little receptionist job, which she says she is doing one Friday a month now on a volunteer basis. Her assignment appeared to be to sit in a chair by the exit and read an Ensign magazine, but she did bust me for having a cell phone in the temple.